McDonald's Canada Wants Us to be Less Grossed Out by McNuggets, Is Grossing Us Out

Our Northern neighbors don't shy away from the tough questions. That seems to be the takeaway from the latest McDonald's Canada marketing campaign.

In a series of videos called "Our Chicken. Your Questions," the company answers questions like, "What are legitimately in mcnuggets is there pink goop?" and "Do you put the whole chicken in and mix it to make chicken McNuggets? That's what they say in school."

These un-edited questions point to a curiosity about McDonald's meat that is so widespread teachers are discussing it in classrooms. For the answers, McDonald's Canada takes us to the Cargill factory in Ontario, where we meet Amanda, a de-boning stakeholder. She's spent nine years in the factory staring at raw chicken and ensuring it is de-boned properly. She de-bones a chicken by hand to demonstrate which parts of the chicken are used for the nuggets. While seeing chickens flying through the air on the hooks of mechanical factory lines might be disconcerting, we're seeing chickens. That's the main point here.

There might not be a blender in the first video, but there's a huge chicken grinder and mixer in the second that combines a concoction of meat and skin clearly meant to prove more appealing than the rumors of pink slime. But when it's squirted out of the grinder it looks a lot like Play-Doh.

While this might be seen as a step toward transparency, Huffington Post Canada pointed out that the McDonald's Web site lists dimethylpolysiloxane as an ingredient, which is "a silicone-based product used to emulsify food and prevent caking and foaming. It's also used in cosmetics, shampoo and silly putty."